Currently, in financial institutions, when tellers accept deposits from customers, currency bills may be manually counted and then put into a cash drawer. Checks are often clipped with a receipt indicating the depositor and then put to the side until the teller has time to verify the amounts. In some instances, the currency bills and the checks may both be set aside for processing at a later time. Generally, however, the customer is given a receipt at the time the transaction occurs, indicating the amount of the transaction. The receipt is generally based on the numbers given to the teller by the customer.
Since the currency bills are put into the cash drawer along with other currency bills, there is no way to track the currency bills that are deposited into the system. After bills have been placed into the cash drawer, there is no way to tie or link the currency bills which have been deposited to the customer who deposited them. If a currency bill is subsequently identified as being counterfeit (for example, when the bill is forwarded to the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve identifies the bill as being counterfeit), the bank must bear the loss since the currency bill was not linked or otherwise associated with the person depositing the bill.
As mentioned above, the amounts of the checks are often not verified until after the customer is given a receipt for the transaction. If there is a discrepancy, such as an adding error on the part of the customer, the customer will not be notified until after receiving a receipt indicating otherwise. Since the customer has a receipt indicating the amount of the deposit, the customer may rely on this information. For example, the customer may withdraw or write checks based on the amount recorded on the receipt. Although a hold may also have been placed on the deposited funds, unless there are cleared funds to cover the attempted withdrawal, such attempts to withdraw may cause the customer to overdraw, which may cause customer dissatisfaction.
Also, when a customer requests money from the teller, the teller must manually count out and distribute the funds. This may be a time consuming process, which may also cause customer dissatisfaction. Furthermore, the teller may make an error in counting out the currency bills. If the teller withdraws too little, the customer is likely to be dissatisfied. If the teller withdraws too much, the customer may not inform the institution, which would cause the institution to lose money.
Another problem with the current situation is that deposited checks often must be transported to another location for scanning and processing. This creates an extra step, adding time to a time sensitive process (since the checks must be presented to the issuing bank within a certain amount of time).